FROM BIG GOVERNMENT TO BIG GOVERNACE - huji.ac.ilregulation.huji.ac.il/papers/jp35.pdf · FROM BIG...

ISSN: 2079-5882 © David Levi-Faur

Jerusalem Papers in Regulation & Governance

Working Paper No. 35

July 2011

FROM BIG GOVERNMENT

TO BIG GOVERNACE ?

David Levi-Faur

Senior Research Fellow, KFG, Free University of Berlin,

The Department of Political Science the Federmann School

of Public Policy & Government

The Hebrew University, Mount Scopus,

Jerusalem, Israel, 91905

E-Mail: [email protected]

Jerusalem Forum

on Regulation & Governance

The Hebrew University

Mount Scopus

Jerusalem, 91905, Israel

הפורום הירושלמי

לרגולציה וממשליות

האוניברסיטה העברית הר הצופים

91905, ירושלים

Email :[email protected]

http://regulation.huji.ac.il


1 © David Levi-Faur

Working Paper No. 35 | July 2011

From Big Government to Big Governance ?

David Levi-Faur

Abstract: This paper explores the origins and various meanings of the

concept of governance. It discusses governance as an interdisciplinary research

agenda on order and disorder, efficiency and legitimacy all in the context of the

hybridization of modes of control that allow the production of fragmented and

multidimensional order within the state, by the state, without the state and

beyond the state. The plurality of the modes of control reflect and reshape new

ways of making politics, new understanding of institutions of the state and

beyond the state and allow us to explore new ways for the control of risks,

empower citizens and promote new and experimentalist forms of democratic

decision making. It presents three prevalent approaches for the study of the

relations between government and governance and suggest a fourth one which

build on the regulation literature and emphasize the expansion of regulation

both by government and by civil and business actors.

Forthcoming in Levi-Faur, David, Oxford Handbook of Governance, Oxford

University Press, March 2012.




From Big Government to Big

Governance ?

Governance is said to be many things, including a buzz-word, a fad, a framing device,

a bridging concept, an umbrella concept, a descriptive concept, a slippery concept, an

empty signifier, a weasel word, a fetish, a field, an approach, a theory and a

perspective. In this handbook, Governance is an interdisciplinary research agenda on

order and disorder, efficiency and legitimacy all in the context of the hybridization of

modes of control that allow the production of fragmented and multidimensional order

within the state, by the state, without the state and beyond the state. The plurality of

the modes of control reflect and reshape new ways of making politics, new

understanding of institutions of the state and beyond the state and allow us to explore

new ways for the control of risks, empower citizens and promote new and

experimentalist forms of democratic decision making. As the Oxford Handbook of

Governance intends to demonstrate, governance is increasingly becoming a broad

concept that is central to the study of political, economic, spatial and social order in

general and the understanding of the dynamics of change of capitalist democracies in

particular.

While the origins, meanings, significance and implications of the concept of

governance are often disputed, governance has become an important concept and

indeed probably one of the most important manifestations of the rise of neo-

institutionalism in the social sciences (March and Olsen, 1984). Paradoxically, it is

almost as popular to lament the multiple, and sometimes ambiguous, meanings of

governance, as it is to employ the term in creative ways. The literature on governance

contains narratives and analysis of democratic controls and challenges beyond the

traditional institutional literature. In the spirit of Karl Deutsch's classic the Nerves of

Government, it reflects an understanding that "it might be profitable to look upon

government somewhat less as a problem of power and somewhat more as a problem




of steering" (1963, p. xxvii). Institutional technocrats (that is, people who preach the

advantages of governance as the technology of control rather than an instrument of

power) are often happy to endorse Deutsch's recommendation. Sometime they are

successful in convincing even highly suspicious governments to adopt the approach,

at least on the surface (Burns, 2010).1 Yet, putting the political use of the concept

aside for the moment, the scholarly value of the approach as a bridging concept is

promising (Kersbergen & Waarden, 2004, 143). Building on the various

manifestations of neo-institutionalism in the social sciences the governance approach

to politics, institutions and policy offers an exciting and fruitful integrative theme for

the ever more fragmented and decentered social sciences, with their disciplinary

division of labor that is increasingly being called into question (Braithwaite, 2005;

Hall, 2007).

Why, and to what extent, governance can play out its scholarly, intellectual and

normative missions is an issue that will be discussed here and throughout the

Handbook’s chapters. Let me start, however, by noting that it was not always the case.

Governance, while not novel in the sense that it does not entirely reflect new practices

and institutions, was for a long time marginal to the scholarly discourse of the social

sciences (Pierre and Peters, 2000, 1; Kersbergen & Waarden, 2004, 143). It is still in

the process of being translated (and in this process transformed) into different

languages. In most languages, I suspect, it is awaiting official translation. In Hebrew,

for example, the term does not have yet an agreed translation. The Chinese academic

community had by 2000 agreed that governance should be translated as zhili (Burns,

2010).2 While still being adapted to new cultural and institutional contexts,

governance is no longer marginal, neither in the policy arenas nor in scholarly

discourse, as will be elaborated in this chapter, for good reasons. Consequently, it

became a research agenda that unites scholars across the social sciences, many of

whom recognize the growing gaps between the formal constitutional order and the

way order is produced and reproduced in everyday life.




The notion of governance, which was rarely used and nearly incomprehensible before

the 1980s, appears now in countless book and article titles, in the names of academic

journals, educational and research institutions, and academic networks (Offe, 2009,

554). It is the subject of handbooks and a recognized focus of teaching programs,

research, and institutional and public policy reform (Lynn, 2012). One could go on,

and expose more evidence on the growth of the scholarly interest in governance

across major fields and note its relative absence from others. Yet the most important

issue that this chapter takes upon itself - especially given the countless useful

contributions that already exist in the field - is to contextualize the study of

governance in a more general framework of understanding of the processes of

institutionalization and of a shift towards poly-centered polities, politics and policy

making. The chapter identifies four major ways of thinking about governance as

complementary to or an alternative to states and governments. It then asserts the

theoretical potential of one of these approaches in particular, that is to say, the one

which emphasizes the parallel growth of state-centered and society-centered

governance. This approach is grounded in arguments about the rise of the regulatory

state and of the global diffusion of regulatory capitalism and brings the literatures of

governance and regulation together.

I. The Scholarly Origins and Growth of Governance

The concept of governance probably stems from the Greek kybernan meaning to pilot,

steer or direct, which was translated into Latin as gubernare. Our modern concepts of

“government” and “governance” are indirectly related to this basic idea (Schneider &

Hyner, 2006, 155).3 In the 1950s and the 1960s, the topic of governance was marginal

to the production of knowledge in the social sciences and humanities (as reflected in

the ISI Web of Knowledge databases). The small number of papers that were

classified under this topic concentrated mainly on higher education and urban

governance most probably demonstrating that hierarchical modes of control do not

capture much of the politics of either universities or local government




While the notion of governance was always there, it played a limited role in shaping

the discourse of the social sciences. The influence of the papers that were classified

under this topic, until the end of the mid 1970s, is low when assessed by their impact.4

The situation changed radically with the publication of Oliver Williamson's

Transaction Costs Economics: Governance of Contractual Relations [1979] and with

the growing interest in Law and Economics in corporate governance. Williamson's

paper had a strong impact. It not only accounted for about 83 percent of the citations

of papers on the topic of governance in the period 1975-1980 but it is also one of most

cited papers in the literature so far. The period 1981-1985 is characterized by the

dominance of issues of corporate governance both generally and within the narrower

population of highly cited papers. Urban and higher education governance issues are

still there but with low volume and with low number of citations. The ten highly cited

papers that were publish between 1981 and 1985 received 74 percent of the citations

and 8 of these 10 dealt with corporate governance in one form or another. The

following five years (1986-1990) suggested a further spread of the concept. Yet it is

only in the 1990s that governance became a buzz-concept. In the 1980s only 349

papers were classified as dealing with the topic and these papers were cited altogether

3609 times; in the 1990s, the number of papers and the number of citations both grew

more than ten times (3773 papers and 70,157 citations). Many more papers were

influential in this period. Thus, the share of the 10 most cited ones in the total number

of citations dropped to 25 percent in the first half of the 1990s and to 14 percent for

the second half.

The first decade of the second millennium saw further acceleration in the interest of

the scholarly community in governance. The number of papers on the topic grew to

18,648 and they drew 104,928 citations. The share of the most cited papers in the

overall pie of citation declined even further, to less than 5 percent. The gradual

flattening of the influence of a small number of papers may suggest a healthy

development in the field. An analysis of 9366 papers on the topic of governance that

were published between 2006 and 2009 reveals that they came from economic

journals (1312), management (1121), political science (1086), business (1061),

environmental studies (993) public administration (911), planning & development




(788), geography (758), business and finance (733), international relations (642), law

(578), urban studies (436), sociology (383) and over 50 other fields. By comparison,

the 158 papers that were published in the years 1981-1985 were published mainly in

Law Journals (44 papers) followed by Political Science (22), Economics (13) &

Public administration (10).

One way to understand the growing interest in governance and the popularity of the

concept better is to look at the tipping points, that is, in influential publications that set

the tone for further expansion of the concept. It is tempting to focus in this regard on

papers and manuscripts in the field of political science, my own discipline.

Nonetheless if the social sciences at large are considered as a reference point,

Williamson's paper (1979) is probably the best representative. The paper examines the

preoccupation of the new institutional economics with the origins, incidence and

ramifications of the notion of 'transaction costs' and only indirectly with the concept

of 'governance'. To explain how actors try to minimize transaction costs he links the

characteristics of investment and the frequency of transactions and distinguishes four

types of governance: market, unilateral, bilateral, and trilateral. The three non-market

governance structures (or institutional frameworks as he defines them) require some

form of hierarchical governance (for him the internalization of production in "firms").

Yet his typology of various forms of governance was not adopted widely in the rest of

the social sciences. The term governance was more popular than any particular

method and definition that was applied by any scholar or scholarly approach. What

was also probably taken most from Williamson was his distinction between market

and hierarchies (see also Williamson, 1975). While Lindblom and Dhal (1953) had for

long used the distinction to disaggregate government and to explore other sources of

authority, with Williamson the distinction became entrenched in the scholarly

imagination. It is vis-a-vis these two modes of governance - markets and hierarchies -

that the notion of network attracted more and more attention. Woody Powell "Neither

Markets Nor Hierarchy: Networks Forms of Organization'' [1990] and Rod Rhodes

Policy Networks: A British Perspective [1990] served most probably as the earliest

and most influential papers in setting the agenda and pointing out the direction of

research. The notion of a network, as a governance structure and an institutional




arrangement, as well as the recognition of the importance of informal spheres of

authority, was quick to spread out. This was not least because political scientists had

studied governance beyond government for long time without calling it so. For

example, growing interests in corporatist and alternative modes of interest

intermediation (Schmitter, 1974; van Waarden, 1992), in private interest government

(Heclo and Wildavsky, 1974; Streeck & Schmitter, 1985), issue networks (Heclo,

1978) and policy styles (Richardson, 1982; 2012). All laid the foundation for the

study of governance as a research agenda that looked beyond the constitutional

arrangements and formal aspects of the polity, politics and policy.

II. Governance as a Signifier of Change: The Science of Shiftology

One reason that made governance such an important concept in the social sciences is

that it carries images and meanings of change. This happens of course in a period of

turbulence and therefore it is not surprising that scholars started to devote more and

more attention to the study of change. Within this process also they became more

open to new ways, new concepts and new issues for research. This "newness", and its

relation to "change", is reflected in the following quotation from Rhodes:

Governance signifies a change in the meaning of government, referring to

new processes of governing; or changed conditions of ordered rule; or

new methods by which society is governed" (Rhodes, 2012, x; also

Rhodes, 1996, pp. 652).

The rise of governance coincided with the widespread consensus that ours is (again)

an era of change, of shifts, and even of transformation and paradigm change. In the

governance literature this was best captured in the observation of "shifts" in

governance and controversies about their directions and implications. These shifts

suggest that authority is institutionalized, or at least can be institutionalized in

different spheres, and by implication these arenas can compete, bargain, or coordinate




among themselves or ignore each other. The shifts are conceptualized in three

different directions: upward (to the regional, transnational, intergovernmental and

global), downward (to the local, regional, and the metropolitan) and horizontally (to

private and civil spheres of authority). Some of the most dominant ways to think

about shifts in governance include a shift from politics to markets, from community to

markets, from politicians to experts, from political, economic and social hierarchies to

de-centered markets, partnerships and networks; from bureaucracy to regulocracy,

from service provision to regulation; from the positive state to the regulatory state;

from big government to small government; from the national to the regional; from the

national to the global; from hard power to soft power and from public authority to

private authority.

It is important to note that scholars of different aspects of the political order may have

different shifts in mind when thinking about them. Scholars of international relations

(or global governance) most often think about governance as denoting a shift from

'anarchy' to 'regulation' at the global level and have in mind more order and stronger

institutions. Scholars of domestic politics by contrast often mean a 'softer order' that

replaces stagnating bureaucracies and centralized state controls with softer and

collaborative forms of policy making. Both however focus on the omnipresence of

change. The multiplicity of shifts that can legitimately and usefully capture the notion

of the rise of governance invites clarifications and opens a great window of

opportunity for both ambiguity-bashers and the rise of "shiftology" as the study of

change. For example, it is useful to consider and to define more precisely to what

extent the shift away from government is also a shift away from the state and from

public and private hierarchies. The choice of words here is significant: government,

state and hierarchies are different signifiers. We can imagine for example a shift away

from government that is not a shift away from the state, because the state itself is

more than government and while governments may shrink, other parts of the state

(e.g., courts) may expand. We can also imagine a shift away from hierarchy towards

governance that does not signify a shift away from government, because government

adapts or reorganizes itself in horizontal or decentered forms. A useful way to think

about these shifts is provided by Lynn (2012), who conceptualizes them as schematic




trajectories of adaptation and transformations. The departure point is a particular

division of tasks and responsibilities in the role of civil society, business and

government in supplying or exerting governance. The movements are not only from

different departure points but also in different directions and towards different degrees

of division of tasks and responsibilities (see figure 1, Lynn, 2012).

III. Governance as Structure, Process, Mechanism & Strategy

Governance, much like government, has at least four meanings in the literature: a

structure, a process, a mechanism and a strategy (cf. Börzel, 2010a; Risse, 2012,

Pierre and Peters, 2000; Héritier and Rhodes, 2011, Jessop 2011, Kjær, 2004;

Bartolini, 2011). While the distinction between these four meanings is often not

clearly elaborated, it might be useful to clarify them for analytical and theoretical

purposes. As a structure, governance signifies the architecture of formal and informal

institutions; as a process it signifies the dynamics and steering functions involved in

lengthy never ending processes of policy making; as a mechanism it signifies

institutional procedures of decision-making, of compliance and of control (or

instruments); finally, as a strategy it signifies the actors' efforts to govern and

manipulate the design of institutions and mechanisms in order to shape choice and

preferences.

Most governance literature focuses on governance as structure, probably as a

reflection of the dominance of institutionalism in the social sciences. Structures are

understood and conceptualized sometimes as "systems of rules" (Rosenau, 1995, 13),

"regimes of laws, rules, judicial decisions, and administrative practices" (Lynn,

Heinrich and Hill, 2001, 7), "institutionalized modes of social coordination" (Risse,

2012), a "set of multi-level, non-hierarchical and regulatory institutions" (Hix 1998:

39) and “the comparatively stable institutional, socio-economic and ideational

parameters as well as the historically entrenched actor constellations" (Zürn et al.,

2010, 3). The diverse range of ways in which governance structures are

conceptualized is therefore broad enough to allow several approaches to the study of

alternative institutions of government such as networks, markets and private

standards.




The conceptualization of governance as a process aims to capture more dynamic

interactive aspects than that of governance as structure. Thus, we can think about

governance not as a stable or enduring set of institutions but as an ongoing process of

steering, or enhancing the institutional capacity to steer and coordinate (Pierre and

Peters, 2000, 14; Kooiman, 2003). The processes are evident in definitions that stress

that governance is a "norm generating process" (Humrich and Zangl, 2010, 343) as

well as from the conceptualization of governance as "practices of governing" (Bevir,

2011, 1) and the "exercise of authority, public" (Heinrich, 2011, 256).

Governance is also about the institutionalization and naturalization of procedures of

decision making. We can also benefit from a distinction between five major

mechanisms of decision-making via: monetized exchange, non-monetized exchange,

command, persuasion and solidarity. Monetized exchanges are usually market

exchanges and are characterized by minimal or moderate transaction costs. Non-

material exchanges involve resources that are hard or impossible to monetize or

otherwise assign value. In both cases of exchange - the monetized and the non-

monetized – decision-making involves deciding whether to exchange or not, as well

as where, when and how. Command is a decision-making mechanism that involves

rule making with the expectation of compliance from the subject being commanded. It

is an authoritative and hierarchical mechanism of decision-making which often is

associated with the state but of course is not confined to it. Persuasion in decision-

making involves the elaboration of values, preference and interest as well as the

rationalization and framing of options for action and the exchange of ideas and

information in a deliberative manner. Finally, solidarity is a mechanism that rests on

loyalty rather than voice, love rather than interest, faith rather than critical thinking,

and group identity rather than individualism.

Governance as strategy, or ‘Governancing’, is the design, creation and adaptation of

governance systems. If governing is the act of government and the design of a

hierarchy of governmental institutions, then governancing is about the




decentralization of power and the creation of decentralized, informal, and

collaborative systems of governance. Governancing therefore refers to governance-in-

action (Barkay 2009) and to the institutional designs by actors that go beyond the

formal institutions of government. For example, I consider the set of strategies of the

European Parliament, to extend its control of the system of comitology, as an example

of governancing (Héritier and Moury, 2012). Another example of governance as

strategy is the active design of soft architectures of governance such as networks

(Levi-Faur, 2011), soft mechanisms of decision making such as the Open Method of

Coordination () and hyper innovation and experimentalism as an art of governance

(Sable and Zeitlin, 2012) .

It is also useful to define what governance is not. First, governance is not a unified,

homogenous and hierarchical approach to the study of politics, economics and

society. Indeed the very notion of homogeneity stands in contrast to the basic

underlying belief of a large group of governance scholars who tend to see themselves

as (neo)pluralists and pragmatists. Second, governance, so far, is not a theory of

causal relations. There is no need to explain governance structures, processes,

mechanism or strategies with new theories. Still governance and governancing can

force and revitalize some explanatory strategies at the expense of others. Indeed, this

is what Rhodes' (2012) third wave of governance studies is all about. Third,

governance is not government. It may be considered as more than government or an

alternative to government but it is not synonymous with it

IV. Governance and the Search for Theory of the State

It is useful to distinguish between four perspectives on the state in the age of

governance. I will present the first three in this section and cover a fourth in the next

section. The first perspective on the state in governance theory is that of "governance

as the hollowing out of the state" (Jessop, 1994; Peters, 1994; Rhodes, 1994). This

conceptualizes the shift from government to governance whereby power and authority

drift away upwards toward transitional markets and political institutions and

downward toward local or regional government, domestic business communities and

Non-Governmental Organizations. There are different and interesting variations




within this perspective. Yet one of the clearest and to some extent most provocative

views was taken by Rod Rhodes, who used the phrase "the hollowing out of the state"

to suggest, with some qualifications, that the British state, and by extension other

states, is being eroded or eaten away (Rhodes, 1997, 100). "The state", he argued,

"becomes a collection of inter-organizational networks made up of governmental and

societal actors with no sovereign actor able to steer or regulate" (Rhodes, 1997, 57).

Similarly, Sørensen and Torfing suggested that:

"Although the state still plays a key role in local, national and

transnational policy processes, it is nevertheless to an increasing extent

‘de-governmentalized’ since it no longer monopolizes the governing of

the general well-being of the population in the way that it used to do. The

idea of a sovereign state that governs society top-down through laws, rules

and detailed regulations has lost its grip and is being replaced by new

ideas about a decentered governance based on interdependence,

negotiation and trust" (2005, 195-196).

In the same vein Klijn and Koppenjan (2000, 135) wrote that an "apparently broad

consensus has developed around the idea that government is actually not the cockpit

from which society is governed and that policy making processes rather are generally

an interplay among various actors". It is hard however to identify a positive theory of

the state in the writings of the proponents of the "hollowing of the state approach" and

instead the emphasis is on state failure and a criticism of "reified concepts of the state

as a monolithic entity, interest, or actor" (Bevir, 2011, 2). This is quite understandable

since most efforts were focused on theory and empirical research on policy networks.

Still, there is a more important and illuminating point here, this perspective is strongly

connected with pluralists and neo-pluralist theories of the state which tend to see the

state as a broker or even a weather-vane. The autonomy of the state is constrained and

it reflects the preferences of most of the strongest groups in society. While normative,

empirical and constructivists pluralists seems to set the tone in this interpretation of

the state, this view is often shared by neo-Marxists (Jessop, 1994). In short, this

governance approach is a society-centered analysis and despite Rhodes's (1997, 29-

32; 2007, 7-8) effort to draw lines between his perspective on governance and




pluralism, they belong to the same intellectual and scholarly family. Thus, Rhodes

(2007) "Understanding Governance: Ten Years On" continues to asserts the thesis of

the hollowing out of the state, to ignore the notion of the regulatory state and to equate

states and governance with core-executive:

"The ‘hollowing out of the state’ means simply that the growth of

governance reduced the ability of the core executive to act effectively,

making it less reliant on a command operating code and more reliant on

diplomacy." (Rhodes, 2007, 6)

The second perspective may best be described as that of "de-governancing". Like the

concepts of deregulation and debureaucratization, it is about the intended and

unintended outcomes of limiting the ability to govern via centralized administrative

and political mechanisms. De-governancing is about the hollowing out of the state but

also the hollowing out of alternative spheres of authority such as 'business-to-

business' regulation, civil regulation and transnational regulation. Good governance in

this approach is "no governance" or "minimal governance" and the preferred mode of

control is that of the market. If the first perspective is about the 'hollowing out of the

state' then this perspective is about the 'hollowing out of politics' altogether. It is often

associated with the effort to devise market-forms of governance as alternatives to

political forms. While, it is hard to find scholars who explicitly and consistently favor

market mechanisms over all other forms of control, including civil and business-to-

business regulation. Yet, there are enough preferences for "lite" modes of regulation

in issues such as climate change and carbon markets and enough opposition to

hierarchical and statist modes of governance for this perspective to be considered

here, along with the other three.

The third perspective, " state-centered governance", combines a recognition of the

shift and transformation in the organization of the state, the limitations of its policy

capacities and the importance of private actors in the policy process and in global




governance more generally, with the suggestion that the state is still the most

important and central actor in politics and policy. Thus Pierre and Peters suggest that

".... although governance relates to changing relationships between state

and society and a growing reliance on less coercive policy instruments,

the state is still the centre of considerable political power. Furthermore,

emerging forms of governance departing from a model of democratic

government where the state was the undisputed locus of power and

control, hence we cannot think of any better 'benchmark' than the image of

the state as portrayed in liberal-democratic theory. For these reasons

mainly we look at governance as processes in which the state plays a

leading role, making priorities and defining objectives" (Pierre and Peters,

2000, 12)

Claus Offe nicely identified two important aspects of this version of governance that

together point to the resilience of the state:

"..one finds the notion that governance can increase the intervention

capacity of the state by bringing non-state actors into the making and

implementation of public policy, thus making the latter more efficient and

less fallible. ... The catchphrase of this doctrine is that the state should

limit itself to steering and leave the rowing to other actors. One could also

speak of auxiliary forces within civil society who, through appropriate

means and according to their specific competences and resources, are

being recruited for cooperation in the fulfillment of public tasks, become

subject to regulatory oversight and economic incentives, and are thus

licensed to privately exercise (previously exclusively) public functions.

The core intuition is that of a state-organized unburdening of the state.

....Underlying this shift in emphasis is the vision of a “leaner” and at the

same time more “capable” state" (Offe, 2009, 555).




My own work on the EU regulatory regimes suggested that in order to understand the

institutional gaps between the EU electricity and telecoms regimes one needs to

develop “a state centered multi-level governance” approach (Levi-Faur, 1999, 201).

This was later reasserted in the portrayal of the leaner and meaner state (Jordana and

Levi-Faur, 2004). The work of Héritier emphasized the critical importance of the

"shadow of hierarchy" (i.e. the state) in the effective and legitimate application of new

modes of governance (Héritier and Lehmkuhl, 2008; Börzel, 2010b). Börzel (2010a)

emphasizes the paradox that the lower the effectiveness of government, the greater the

need for governance, whose effectiveness (and legitimacy) depends, however, on the

presence of government. Schout, Jordan and Twena (2010) similarly observed that

new (and old) instruments in EU governance are highly reliant on administrative

capacities. Risse (2012) extended the state-centered governance perspective to areas

of 'limited statehood'. Börzel and Risse discussed the possibility of Governance

without the State (Börzel and Risse, 2010). Bell and Hindmoor (2009) claim to go

somewhat beyond Pierre and Peters (2000) to develop what they call a "state-centered

relational approach”, arguing that states have enhanced their capacity to govern by

strengthening their own institutional and legal capacities at the same time as

developing closer relations with non-state actors. They reject the notion that there has

been any general loss of governing capacity and emphasize that governments rely

upon hierarchical authority to implement their policies because even when

governments choose to govern in alternative ways, the state remains the pivotal player

in establishing and operating governance strategies and partnerships (Bell and

Hindmoor, 2009, 2-3; Matthews, 2012).

"State-centered (multilevel) governance" denotes the high autonomy of the state when

the state is not dependent directly or instrumentally on society or capitalists and can

shape its preferences both in the context of privatization and liberalization and in the

context of globalization and the creation of transnational and intergovernmental

institutions in the regional and global arenas (Hooghe and Marks, 2001; Bache, 2012).

Taken to the extreme, this view would suggest that polities worldwide are and should

be structured around states; governance is either a marginal or temporary solution to

state failures. Scholars need to bring the state back in order to tune their theories of

politics and policy to the realties out there. Much of the literature of governance,

probably most, would be easily classified as belonging to this perspective.




V. From Big Government to Big Governance

A fourth perspective on the state in the literature of governance is emerging. This is

best referred to as big governance, and may help to take the literature in this field

forward in a significant manner while at the same time providing a better

understanding of the role of the state in the age of governance. This perspective

explores the relations between governments and governance from the perspective of

regulation and with regard to the consolidation of what might best be called regulatory

capitalism (Braithwaite, 2000; 2008; Braithwaite et al., 2007; Jordana & Levi-Faur,

2004; Levi-Faur, 2005; Lobel, 2012; Dӧhler, 2011, Lehmkuhl, 2008). It suggests that

both governance and regulation are major signifiers of the structure of polities, the

processes of politics and of policy outcomes. The approach draws on the governance

literature in order to denote the decentralization and diversification of politics and

policy beyond the state and draws on the regulation literature in order to denote the

expansion of regulatory governance and especially the notion of the regulatory state.

By bringing the regulation and governance perspectives together an important aspect

of the current capitalist order is becoming clearer: the growth and indeed explosion in

the demand and supply of rules and regulation via hybrid modes of governance.

Big Government, that is, a powerful if leaner government which controls, distributes

and redistributes large amounts of the national domestic product, is still with us but it

is becoming even bigger mainly via regulation. If the expanding part of the Big

Government program for most of the twentieth century was “taxing and spending”, in

the last three decades the expanding part of the Big Government program is

regulation. Still, this is not only about Big Government via regulation and thus not

only about the return of the state via regulatory means and in the form of the

regulatory state. It is also about the growth and expansion of alternative modes of

governance via increasing reliance on regulation. Growth of regulatory functions of

public institutions, alongside the growth in the regulatory functions of the other four

modes of governance, denotes a shift from "Big Government" to "Big (regulatory)

Governance".




The Big Governance perspective, like the state-centered governance perspective,

suggests that the shift to governance is potentially about leaner and in many respects

more capable states. But unlike the state-centered governance perspective, it suggests

that both 'governance' and 'government' can expand. This impression of co-expansion

rests largely on observing the co-expansion of civil, business and public forms of

regulation and the diversification in the instruments of regulation towards standards,

best practices, ranking and shaming. A growing demand for governance is mostly

being supplied via regulation. The suppliers of regulation are not only public actors

but also civil and business actors who collaborate and compete with each other.

Unlike state-centered governance, this co-expansion perspective has a positive theory

of controls - the theory of the regulatory state and more generally also with reference

to growth in the role, capacities and demand for civil and business regulation - the

theory of regulatory capitalism (Levi-Faur, 2005). In short, we are in the heyday of

"Big Governance" and the major question of governancing, that is, the strategy of

governance designs and control, is to determine not which pure mode of governance

is more effective or more legitimate but which hybrids are. We need to conceptualize

a world order where governance is increasingly a hybrid of different systems of

regulatory control; where statist regulation co-evolves with civil regulation; national

regulation expands with international and global regulation; private regulation co-

evolves and expands with public regulation; business regulation co-evolves with

social regulation; voluntary regulations expand with coercive ones; and the market

itself is used or mobilized as a regulatory mechanism.

To understand 'big governance' better we will probably need to bring back some of the

issues that were dealt with by the now neglected and unfashionable theories of

"political development" and bureaucratic and political "modernization". The "Big

Governance" approach draws on the regulatory innovations, experimental governance

and learning literatures in order to examine governance development as a feature not

only of the economically underdeveloped and politically authoritarian countries but

mainly with regards to the developed and democratic countries. The expansion of the




demand and supply of legitimate and effective governance is at the same time the

problématique and the moral compass of this approach.

VI. Conclusions

To grasp the added value of the agenda of governance better, in today’s social science

discourse, we need to consider the bad reputation of governments and hierarchies; the

frustration of reformers and revolutionaries; the statelessness of Anglo-American

political theory; the rise of neo-liberalism; the transformation of the so-called

Weberian hierarchical model of bureaucracy, the end of the Westphalian order; the

efforts to reform, update and extend democratic theory via participation and

deliberation; the transnationalization of civil politics; the emergence of new

transnational risks; the rise of the European Union as a new, surprising and intriguing

transnational order. At the same time we need to consider experimental designs in

democracy and governance more generally and the innovative tools that allow the

creation of alternative modes of regulation in the private and public sphere and as

hybrids of at least five pure modes of governance. Much of this development rests on

the steering functions and their promotion via information-gathering, rule making,

monitoring and enforcement. Rowing via tax collection, distribution, redistribution

and service provision by the government is still here and will most probably stay with

us. Yet in order to meet the challenges of complex society, transnationalization, and

new democratic expectations, governments and other spheres of authority will need to

develop their steering capacities and do it in horizontal rather than hierarchical ways.

The following chapters in this handbook shed light on the challenges we face and how

governance and governancing can help meet them.




Bibliography

Bache, I. 2012. Multi Level Governance in the European Union, Pp.xx in The Oxford

Handbook of Governance. ed D. Levi-Faur Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Barkay, T. 2009. Regulation and voluntarism: A case study of governance in the making.

Regulation and Governance, 3: 360–375.

Bartolini, S 2011. New Modes of Governance - An Introduction, in New Modes of

Governance in Europe: Governing in the Shadow of Hierarchy, A. Heritier, and M. Rhodes,

ed. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, Pages to be supplied at proofs

Bell, S. and Hindmoor, A. 2009. Rethinking Governance: The Centrality of the State in

Modern Society. Port Melbourne, Vic.: Cambridge University Press.

Bevir, M. 2011. Governance as Theory, Practice, and Dilemma. Pp. 1-16 in The Sage

Handbook of Governance. M. Bevir, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Börzel, T.A. 2010a. Governance Without Government - False Promises or Flawed Premises?

SFB Governance Working Paper Series, Berlin: Freie Universität Berlin: SFB 700.

Börzel, T.A. 2010b. European Governance - Negotiation and Competition in the Shadow of

Hierarchy. Journal of Common Market Studies, 48 (2): 191-219.

Börzel, T.A. & Risse T. 2010. Governance Without a State - Can It Work? Regulation and

Governance 4 (2): 1-22.

Braithwaite, J. 2000. The New Regulatory State and the Transformation of Criminology.

British Journal of Criminology, 40: 222-238.

Braithwaite, J. 2005. For Public Social Science. British Journal of Sociology, 56(3): 345-353

Braithwaite, J. 2008. Regulatory Capitalism: How it works, Ideas for Making it Work.

Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Braithwaite, J., Coglianese, C., and Levi-Faur, D. 2007. Can Regulation and Governance

make a Difference? Regulation and Governance, 1:.1–7

Burns, John P., 2010. Western Models and Administrative Reform in China: Pragmatism and

the Search for Modernity. Pp 182-206 in Comparative Administrative Change and Reform:

Lessons Learned. Jon Pierre and Patricia W. Ingraham ed. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s

University Press.

Dhal R. H. and Lindbloom E. Charles 1953. Politics Economics and Welfare, New York:

Harper & Brothers.

Deutsch KW, 1963. The Nerves of Government: Models of political communication. Free

Press, New York.

Dӧhler, M. 2011. Regulation. Pp. 518-534In: The Sage Handbook of Governance. ed. M.

Bevir. Los Angeles and London: Sage.

Hall, PA. 2007. The Dilemmas of Contemporary Social Science. Boundary 2. 34(3):121-41




Heclo, H. 1978. Issue networks and the executive establishment. Pp. 87–124 in The New

American Political System. A. King ed, Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute,.

Heclo. H. and Wildavsky A. 1974. The Private Government of Public Money. London:

Macmillan.

Heinrich C.J. 2011. Public Management. Pp. 252-269 in The Sage Handbook of Governance.

M. Bevir, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Hix, S. 1998. The Study of the European Union II: The 'New Governance' Agenda and its

Revival. Journal of European Public Policy, 5 (1): 38-65

Heritier, A. and Eckert. S. 2008. New Modes of Governance in the Shadow of Hierarchy:

Self-Regulation by Industry in Europe. Journal of Public Policy, 28 (1): 113-138.

Heritier, A. and Lehmkuhl, D. (eds.) 2008.The Shadow of Hierarchy and New Modes of

Governance. Special Issue Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 28 (1).

Heritier, A. and Rhodes, M. (eds.) 2011. New Modes of Governance in Europe: Governing in

the Shadow of Hierarchy. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.

Heritier, A and Moury C. 2012. Institutional Change in European Governance: The

Commission´s Implementing Powers and the European Parliament. Pp.xx in The Oxford

Handbook of Governance. D. Levi-Faur ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hooghe, L and Marks, G. 2001. Multi-level Governance and European Integration. London:

Rowman & Littlefield.

Humrich C. and Zangl, B. 2010. Global Governance through Legislation. Pp.343-357 in

Enderlein et al. (Eds), Handbook on Multi-level Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Jessop B 1994. Post-Fordism and the State. Pp. 251-79 in Post-Fordism: a reader. A Amin ed.

Oxford: Blackwell

Jessop B. 2011. Metagovernance. Pp. 106-123 in, The Sage Handbook of Governance. M.

Bevir, ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Jacint Jordana and David Levi-Faur (eds.), 2004. The Politics of Regulation: Institutions and

Regulatory Reforms for the Governance Age. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Kjær, A. M. 2004. Governance. Cambridge: Polity.

Keersbergen, Van K and Van Waarden, F. 2004. Governance as a Bridge Between

Disciplines: Cross-disciplinary Inspiration Regarding Shifts in Governance and Problems of

Governability, Accountability and Legitimacy. European Journal of Political Research 43,

143-71.

Klijn E. H. and Koppenjan J. F. M 2000. Public Management and Policy Networks:

Foundations of a network approach to governance. Public Management 2(2): 135-158.

Kobrin, S. 1998. Back to the Future: Neomedievalism and the Postmodern Digital World

Economy. Journal of International Affairs, 51(2):361-387.

Kooiman, J. 2003. Governing as Governance. London: Sage.




Lehmkuhl, D. 2008. Control Modes in the Age of Transnational Governance. Law & Policy,

30: 336–363

Levi-Faur, D. 1999. The Governance of Competition: The Interplay of Technology,

Economics, and Politics in European Union Electricity and Telecom Regimes. Journal of

Public Policy, 19 (2): 175-207.

Levi-Faur, D. 2005. The Global Diffusion of Regulatory Capitalism. Annals of the American

Academy of Political and Social Science, 598: 12-32.

Levi-Faur, D. 2011. Regulatory Networks & Regulatory Agencification, Journal of European

Public Policy, Vol. 18 (6),

Lobel O. 2012. New Governance as Regulatory Governance. Pp.xx in The Oxford Handbook

of Governance. D. Levi-Faur ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

Lynn, L. E. Jr. 2010. The Persistence of Hierarchy. Pp 218-236 in, The Sage Handbook of

Governance. M. Bevir, ed.Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Lynn L. E., Jr., 2012. The Many Faces of Governance: Adaptation? Transformation? Both?

Neither?, Pp.xx in The Oxford Handbook of Governance. D. Levi-Faur ed. Oxford: Oxford

University Press,.

Lynn, L. E., Jr., Heinrich, C. J., and Hill, C. J. 2001. Improving Governance: A New Logic

for Empirical Research. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.

March G. J. and Olsen P. J. 1984. The new institutionalism: organizational factors in political

life, The American Political Science Review, 78(3): 734-749.

Marin, B. and Mayntz, R. Eds., 1991. Policy Network: Empirical Evidence and Theoretical

Considerations. Frankfurt aM: Campus Verlag.

Mathews, F. 2012. Governance and State Capacity Ppxx in, Oxford Handbook of

Governance, D. Levi-Faur, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mayntz, R. 2003. New challenges to governance theory. Pp. 27-39 in ed., Governance as

Social and Political Communication. H. P. Bang, ed. Manchester: Manchester University

Press.

Offe, C. 2009. Governance: An ‘Empty Signifier’? Constellations 16:550-562.

Peters, B. Guy 1994. Managing the Hollow State, International Journal of Public

Administration, 17(3&4): 739-756.

Pierre, J. and Peters, B. G. 2000. Governance, Politics and the State. Houndmills,

Basingstoke: Macmillan.

Powell, W.W. 1990. Neither markets nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization. Research

in Organizational Behavior, 12: 295-336.

Rhodes, R. A. W. 1990. Policy networks: a British perspective Journal of Theoretical

Politics, 2 (3): 292-316.

Rhodes, R. A. W. 1994. The Hollowing Out of the State: The Changing Nature of the Public

Service in Britain, The Political Quarterly, 65: 138–151




Rhodes, R.A.W 1996. The New Governance: governing without Government, Political

Studies, 44: 652-67

Rhodes, R. A. W. 1997. Understanding Governance. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open

University Press.

Rhodes, R. A. W. 2007. Understanding Governance: Ten Years On, Organization Studies,

28(8): 1243-1264

Rhodes, R. A. W. 2012. Waves of Governance, Pp.xxx in The Oxford Handbook of

Governance. D. Levi-Faur ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Richardson, J. (ed) 1982. Policy Styles in Western Europe. London: Allen and Unwin

Richardson, J. 2012. New Governance or Old Governance?: A Policy Style Perspective Pp.

xxx in The Oxford Handbook of Governance. D. Levi-Faur ed. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.

Risse, Thomas 2012. Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood. Pp.xx in The Oxford

Handbook of Governance. D. Levi-Faur ed.Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Rosenau J.N. 1995. Governance in the Twenty-first Century, Global Governance 1 (1):13-43.

Rosenau, J. N. 2007. Governing the ungovernable: The challenge of a global disaggregation

of authority. Regulation & Governance, 1: 88–97

Sable Charles F. and Zeitlin Jonathan. 2012. Experimentalist Governance, Pp.xx in The

Oxford Handbook of Governance. ed D. Levi-Faur Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Scharpf, F. W. 1997. Games Real Actors Play. Actor-centred Institutionalism in Policy

Research. Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press.

Schmitter C. P. 1974. Still the Century of Corporatism?. The Review of Politics, 36: 85-131

Schneider, Volker, and Hyner, Dirk. 2006. Security in Cyberspace: Governance by

Transnational Policy Networks. Pp. 154-176 in New Modes of Governance in the Global

System: Exploring Publicness, Delegation and Inclusiveness, ed. M. Koenig-Archibugi and

M. Zürn. New York: Palgrave,

Schout, A. Jordan, A.J. and Twena, M. 2010. From the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ governance in the

European Union: why is there such a diagnostic deficit?, West European Politics, Vol 33(1):

154-170

Sorsensen, E. and Torfing, J. 2005. Democratic anchorage of governance networks,

Scandinavian Political Studies 28 (3): 195-218.

Streeck W. and Schmitter C. P. 1985. Community, Market, State – and Associations? The

Prospective Contribution of Interest Governance to Social Order, European Sociological

Review, 1(2): 119-138

Van Waarden, F. 1992. Dimensions and types of policy networks. European Journal of

Political Research, 21: 29–52




Williamson E.O, 1975. Markets and Hierarchies: Analysis and Antitrust Implications, New

York: The Free Press.

Williamson E.O, 1979. Transaction Cost Economics: The Governance of Contractual

Relations, Journal of Law and Economics, 22: 233-261.

Zürn M. Wälti, S. and Enderlein H. 2010. Introduction, Pp. 1-13 in: Handbook of Multilevel

Governance, Henerik Enderlein, Sonja Wälti, and Michael Zürn,, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

1 Burns (2010) offers a fascinating story of the "selling" of the notion of Governance to suspicious

government officials of China. The ideas about governance which were interpreted as associated with a

strong civil society and the rule of law were of course adapted (and marginalized) to keep the Chinese

power structure and state ideology intact. Officials use it differently then scholars. It can be interpreted

as a supplementary rather than collaborative relationship pattern in Chinese official language context,

but scholars may stress on its partnership collaboration between state and society.

2 In traditional Chinese Zhili is a word including two Chinese characters. "Zhi" means to rule, govern

or put something under control, "Li" means management, regulation or put something in order.

Therefore, it has a combinative meaning of rule and administration. Generally Zhili means government

should manage and handle social affairs with comprehensive manner taking into account political,

economic, educational and cultural considerations. It differs significantly from the traditional

command and control mode of government. .In some political contexts, Zhili also means a

government’s comprehensive control mode which builds on the socialist legacy, for example, Shehui

Zhi’an Zonghe Zhili ( Social Security Comprehensive Administration ). In other words, the notion of

governance was diffused but then transformed and adapted to the local political context. I am grateful

to Liu Peng for his help and clarifying and helping me with the issue.

3 In fourteenth century France Gouvernance signified royal officers and in the England of the

Elizabethan Age people talked about the governance of the family (Pierre & Peters, 2000, 1-2; Bell &

Hindmoor, 2009, 1).

4 All citations and impact data refer to the ISI's Humanities and Social Sciences databases and were

updated to March 2011.

FROM BIG GOVERNMENT TO BIG GOVERNACE - huji.ac.ilregulation.huji.ac.il/papers/jp35.pdf · FROM BIG...

Documents

Transcript of FROM BIG GOVERNMENT TO BIG GOVERNACE - huji.ac.ilregulation.huji.ac.il/papers/jp35.pdf · FROM BIG...